http://kozinets.net/archives/80 Robert Kozinets on Marketing, Media, and Technoculture Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:46:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 http://kozinets.net/archives/80#comment-359 Greg Dunlop Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:39:29 +0000 http://kozinets.net/archives/80#comment-359 p> Robert. It was good to see you again at the San Fransico Airport. I have a comment on Oy Canada. My wife has a small business and on one recent transaction, which she could only source in the USA, was forced to pay higher prices (~ 25%) strictly because she was a Canadian Company. The reason the supplier gave, despite getting 40 complaints a day from Canadian companies, was the 2007 catalogue was printed with fixed USA and CDN prices and duty was also included. She had no choice but to take the price but was able to build the margin into the price for her business customer. Muiltply this over millions of transactions and you can see why Canadians have been paying higher prices. The reason is less competition but some of this is due to less bargaining power which is common with Canadian companies when dealing with much larger USA companies. However, if she was able to get a lower price should she have passed all of it on to her customer? With marginal tax rates of 46% could you blame her if she wanted to keep some of that extra margin? I suspect there is a lag in prices coming down. We shall see what happens next year as a fixed exchange rate at the beggining of the year can no longer be used as an excuse! p>
Robert. It was good to see you again at the San Fransico Airport. I have a comment on Oy Canada.
My wife has a small business and on one recent transaction, which she could only source in the USA, was forced to pay higher prices (~ 25%) strictly because she was a Canadian Company. The reason the supplier gave, despite getting 40 complaints a day from Canadian companies, was the 2007 catalogue was printed with fixed USA and CDN prices and duty was also included. She had no choice but to take the price but was able to build the margin into the price for her business customer. Muiltply this over millions of transactions and you can see why Canadians have been paying higher prices. The reason is less competition but some of this is due to less bargaining power which is common with Canadian companies when dealing with much larger USA companies. However, if she was able to get a lower price should she have passed all of it on to her customer? With marginal tax rates of 46% could you blame her if she wanted to keep some of that extra margin? I suspect there is a lag in prices coming down. We shall see what happens next year as a fixed exchange rate at the beggining of the year can no longer be used as an excuse!

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